Hey,, all this "animation" talk, and yet nobody's touched on the subject of CLAYMATION!

It's what Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit, James & The Giant Peach, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride used, as well as Celebrity Deathmatch, Gumby & Pokey and Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, to a lesser extent.

Dear Mr. John,i am a very big fan of your work. I am from Egypt, where animation isnt that big of an industry. However, I am really interested in It and am currently working on an animated short that I would like to send you a copy of and get your feedback on it. My email is essam_1983 at yahoo dot com. I really really admire your work, and you are someone that i would like to get help from instead of the cows that teach in our art schools here. Yours truely, Essam A.

I just found out about a web site called WWW.cartooncolor.com and it has alot of stuff for animation. Would that be the best place to order an animation board? That site is what Eddie suggested for me.

Dr Awkward.. what med school did you go? Dont forget that animation is really just moving images.. That said ,technically a real life motion picture is animation.. Film is 24 pictures played in sequece in 1 second.. but our mind sees it as action..persistence of vision, blah, blah,blah... so people's definition of animation is usually cartoons(Bugs Bunny, Ren & Stimpy,).. Some define it as anime, or stop motion (claymation), or rotoscoping. The fact of the matter is, you can use any material to animate and they are all valid forms of animation..for example, in my animation class right now, some students experimented on a flip book burning each page differently.. or you can animate with sand or paint or blood or whatever.. so...i dont know where i was going with this, but here is my comment

Hey John. I've been meaning to pick up a copy of Preston Blair's book ever since freetoon.net went offline (they had it posted). Your series has reminded me to do that. There is a new Preston book coming out next month. "Cartooning: Discover the Secrets of Character Design" Do you know anything about it? Think it is worth getting? Do you know how it compares to "Cartoon Animation?" Thanks!

Keep up the great blog and the great art, John K. It's good to know there are people who care about animation, and aren't just trying to make a load of bland, patronising, enslaving crap that'll appeal to some moronic mythical demographic - and make a lot of money at the same time. Most animation these days is anti-art. It's like bubble gum without the flavour. You're the real deal. Keep it up, and thanks for the great blog. Simon, Brisbane, Australia.

>>I probably won't be able to get to it for a month. I'm going up to Canada for a couple weeks.

Hey! I'm in Canada! Are you doing any shows or something? Will you be meeting with PM Harper to discuss better programming on the CBC? When are you gonna get a star on the Walk of Fame? Hell, I'm gonna go shoot them a request right now.

These are great caricatures, but they seem really generous. You got any really exagerrated ones?

i'm just really excited. i missed getting to meet my last cartoon artist hero due to shoddy advertising of the local free paper - so i'm bypassing it by going straight to the source. when ya comin' to visit calgary?

I'm Wondering what it takes to get a charicature done by you. I've been religiously checking your blog since i read an article on it here in Toronto. Actually, haha, donno how you'll react to this, but i just finished first year animation at Sheridan. Not to get my nose TOO brown, but your work is definately what made me want to get into animation as a life style.Thanks BuddyHope to get a reply